Industry News, Trends and Technology, and Standards Updates

Join us as we meet the Leadership Team of Cimetrix in this first post of our “Meet the Team” series

Bob Reback — has served as President and CEO of the company since June 2001. Bob joined Cimetrix as Vice President of Sales in January 1996, was promoted to Executive Vice President of Sales in January 1997, and became President on June 25, 2001.  Bob grew up in Wisconsin and is an enthusiastic Green Bay Packers fan. We talked to Bob about how he got started at Cimetrix, the makings of a good CEO, and the challenges of running a global business.

-----

What brought you to Cimetrix originally?

My background was in robotics and factory automation. I worked at Texas Instruments in the ‘80s when TI’s business was booming and had the opportunity to deploy leading robotics and factory automation technologies of that era. I became involved in the semiconductor industry in the mid-80s with an important project which was one of the first applications of clean-room robots and the SEMI Equipment Communications Standard (SECS) to fully automate a lithography bay. This led to additional factory automation projects with the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers, including the first uses of the new Generic Equipment Model (GEM) standard. In the early ‘90s, I moved to California to work for FANUC Robotics, the world’s largest robot maker. While at FANUC Robotics, Cimetrix called and recruited me. Cimetrix had a unique concept for a PC-based open architecture robot controller, which had the potential to disrupt the growing robotics industry.

What’s your favorite thing about working at Cimetrix?

There are several things that get me really energized. The first is meeting with a client who is an enthusiastic reference for Cimetrix. Fortunately, these meetings now occur on a frequent basis, and have become our expectation. These meetings are very enjoyable and personally satisfying, as I get to hear wonderful stories about how Cimetrix team members worked hard and took extra care to help our clients. The second thing is seeing the individual professional development of the great people who work at Cimetrix. We invest a lot in building the Cimetrix culture, emphasizing continuous improvement, and establishing shared values. It is a joy to see Cimetrix employees grow in not only the skill sets of their craft, but also in their professional careers.

What do you think makes a good CEO?

Well, I believe there are a number of things necessary to be a good CEO. First, I believe the focus must be on creating long-term value and building a company that lasts. This means looking at “What is best for Cimetrix?” over the long term. You must consider the interests of shareholders, clients and employees, while also ensuring every decision reflects the Company values. I believe the values and culture of the company start at the top. The CEO must personally possess the values he or she wants in the company, and demonstrate those values by example. They can’t just appear on a poster on the breakroom wall - you’ve got to really live and breathe them. They should be communicated and celebrated regularly, and there must be consequences for those whose actions do not reflect the company’s values.

Second, being a good CEO means being a good teacher who is able to listen, understand, empathize, and mentor. To do this, the CEO must be secure in his position - slow to blame others for problems, and quick to give credit to others when good things happen.

In addition, I believe the CEO must have passion and perseverance in the business. You never know what challenges may arise, and the CEO must be ready and able to lead the team in overcoming whatever obstacles the world may throw at us. It’s important for the CEO to have passion in order to articulate and reach alignment on the vision for the company, because you need people to be excited and energized about their role in fulfilling that vision.

Do you have a favorite quote?

People at Cimetrix know I read a lot of biographies, and can pull out quotes for almost any occasion. If I had to choose one favorite, I would go with the classic Vince Lombardi, “The will to win is not nearly so important as the will to prepare to win.”

How do you deal with challenges that come up in your work life?

First I refresh my memory and review what were the real goals and objectives we were trying to achieve. Then I try to understand the possible options, how much time we have to make a decision, and whether or not we have time to gather more data. We also always check to ensure that any decision reflects our company values, and discard options that might not reflect them.

What do you like to do in your free time?

I love to read on a wide variety of topics, especially history and biographies. I believe in doing some physical exercise on a daily basis, which might be running, biking, golfing, or skiing. I’ve also developed an interest in mindfulness and meditation which has led to some formal classes, retreats, and a regular yoga practice.

What’s the best thing that’s happened to you in your time working at Cimetrix?

Without a doubt, it would have to be all the wonderful people I’ve come to know, which includes clients, shareholders and employees. It also gives me genuine pleasure to see the company grow, and to work with satisfied clients and the truly great team of people we have here at Cimetrix. We’ve invested a lot in continually improving our software products, and know our clients can use our products to achieve success in their projects. We’re also seeing the financial rewards that come with that growth, using our profits to invest in some new products and markets to support that growth over the long term. It’s exciting for me to consider what’s possible in the next phase of our evolution as a company. We have a clear vision for how we can grow our markets, expand our product offerings, add more value for our clients, and do all that in a way that provides a good return to our shareholders. 

Finally, we know you travel quite a bit with your job. What have you learned from your travels?

For the past 20 years, Cimetrix has developed a client base across the US, Europe and Japan. This has provided many opportunities to travel to semiconductor regions in the US, such as the Bay Area, Portland, Phoenix, Austin, Boston and many other cities. We have clients in almost every European country, each with its own culture and work habits. Japan was the first Asian country in which we developed a meaningful client base. Japan requires a lot of patience as it has a unique culture, but once you establish a solid reputation and client base, it is a great place to do business.

Recently we’ve been developing business opportunities in Taiwan, Korea, China and southeast Asia. It has been fascinating to recruit staff and open offices in these areas, as each country has its unique ways of doing business. Cimetrix has become a truly international company with a diverse group of employees, as we now have employees from many different countries.

If I had to summarize what I’ve learned, it is that even though we have employees and clients from a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives, we also share many similarities. People want to be treated with respect, they want to be appreciated for their contributions, they want to be part of a team in which they take pride, and everyone wants to provide a good living for their family. I am convinced we can build a great company with employees from many different backgrounds while also having a shared Cimetrix culture and set of values.

-----

Thanks Bob for a great interview!

To the Cimetrix community of clients, partners, shareholders and employees,

Cimetrix had another year of solid progress during 2016. Financial results were in-line with expectations, as Cimetrix continued to achieve profitability every quarter with full-year revenue in the $6M to $7M range.

Our key highlights include:

• Cimetrix continued to enhance its reputation for product quality and the highest levels of customer support in the industry, receiving consistently excellent feedback from our client base.

• Cimetrix continued to invest in building great products with new releases of all our product lines. Substantial improvements were made in both new features and internal testing that will benefit our clients for many years. 

• Cimetrix gained additional “design wins” for its products in North America, Europe and Japan, where the company has an established presence. In addition, Cimetrix won important new clients in China and Korea. 

• Cimetrix strengthened its organization as we added a number of new employees in business development, software engineering and technical support functions. The Company continued to invest in employee development, education and continuous improvement. We believe the concepts and training we’ve received in lean and agile processes will enable Cimetrix to build better products and more efficiently provide our clients with the highest levels of service. 

• Cimetrix made a number of key investments that we believe will lead to future long-term growth. We strengthened our local sales and technical support in a number of Asian countries. We developed a number of new product prototypes in collaboration with key clients leading to the introduction of an exciting new Cimetrix product in 2016. Several other new products are in development and have the potential to significantly expand our markets.

Cimetrix also held its first shareholder meeting since going private in late 2014, which provided a forum to explain to shareholders why the Company took that important step, the progress we’ve made since going private, and our future plans. As a result of generating positive cash flow from operations, Cimetrix was able to continue providing liquidity for shareholders that contacted the Company. Prior to going private, the Company had over 4.5M shares outstanding, adjusted for stock splits. As of December 31, 2016, the Company had fewer than 3.9M shares outstanding. This means that every current shareholder’s ownership percentage has increased by over 15%.

Going Forward

Going forward, industry analysts predict an increase in semiconductor capital equipment spending for 2017. In addition, we are seeing increased traction for the relatively new SEMI Standards for Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA), also known as Interface A. We believe these trends will enable us to achieve short-term incremental increases in revenue that support continued operations on a profitable basis and investments in new products and markets that will lead to longer-term step function increases in revenue.

We will continue to focus on satisfying our worldwide base of clients, improving our efficiencies and effectiveness, and executing our plan to expand the markets for Cimetrix products for long-term growth.

From all of us at Cimetrix, we thank our clients for the trust they have placed in our products and our team. We also thank our shareholders for their patience and support. 

Sincerely,

Robert H. Reback
President and Chief Executive Officer

The 14th innovations forum for automation was held on January 19 and 20, 2017 at the DGUV Akademie in Dresden, Germany.

Cimetrix was one of the sponsors of the conference.  Dresden is hot bed for semiconductor manufacturing in Europe.  In fact, 50% of the chip output from Europe comes from Dresden. The conference is organized by the Automation Network Dresden which consists of 5 Dresden based companies; AIS, HAP, Ortner, SYSTEMA and Xenon.  SYSTEMA is a Cimetrix partner and helps us with integration projects. 

The focus of the conference is to bring the latest information on best practices, new technologies and the future of automation.  Themes this year were Smart Manufacturing, Industry 4.0 and IIOT (Industrial Internet of Things).  Presentations by Bosch about their automation roadmap, Infineon about running experiments in a highly automated fab, Kostal about standardizing MES, and IAV about the challenges of automated driving where a few of the interesting case studies and technologies.  This is a great conference to meet semiconductor professionals from Europe and learn what the European community is doing in the area of fab automation. For Cimetrix, it is good to see that equipment to host connectivity plays a key role in all the projects outlined during the conference. Sponsoring and attending gave us the opportunity to meet with current customers and start discussions with new potential customers. 

Before the conference, SYSTEMA held an Expert Day session at the SYSTEMA facility in Dresden on the morning of January 19.  The session was a series of presentations targeting predictive maintenance.  SYSTEMA and its partners have a wealth of experience in this area.  

Exhibiting at SEMICON Taiwan for the second time in as many years, Cimetrix significantly expanded its presence at the show with a booth in the Smart Manufacturing Pavilion. Like last year, we shared an exhibit with one of our Taiwan partner companies, Flagship International.

Since the semiconductor industry is one of the most important economic engines in Taiwan, this year’s Gala Dinner at the Grand Hyatt featured an excellent and supportive speech by the country’s new President, Dr. Ing-Wen Tsai. Taiwan’s tech industries have had a solid year thus far, leading other regions of the world and capturing additional market share.

In recent years, SEMI has increased its emphasis on focused “educational” forums at its SEMICON shows, and set a new high-water mark at SEMICON Taiwan with 20 of these events ranging from Design to Materials to Packaging to Overseas Investmen. Cimetrix was privileged to be named as one of the speakers at the Smart Manufacturing Forum, which included presentations by a variety of thought leaders from UMC, Rockwell Automation, ASE, and others. Alan Weber represented Cimetrix with a presentation entitled “Realizing Smart Manufacturing in Semiconductor Industry with SEMI Standards,” making the case that the industry’s factories already embody many of the characteristics of a Smart Manufacturing environment by virtue of the latest generations of SEMI Standards that support the required connectivity and control capabilities.

As a specific example, the UMC “Big Data to Manufacturing Excellence” presentation by Mr. James Lin described the “Wait Time Waste” analysis application, which is directly enabled by the SEMI E168 (Product Time Measurement) standard and the underlying detailed equipment event data called for in the E164 (EDA Common Metadata) standard.

To support the level of ongoing activity at the show and elsewhere in Taiwan, the Cimetrix contingent also included Derek Lindsey and Kerry Iwamoto, shown here during one of quieter moments in the booth.

Another highlight of the week for Cimetrix was participation in the eMDC (e-Manufacturing & Design Collaboration Symposium), now in its 10th year in Taiwan. Alan Weber made a presentation entitled “The Role of Models in Semiconductor Smart Manufacturing” that echoed a number of the messages shared at the Smart Manufacturing Forum but with heavier emphasis on the manufacturing applications that are enabled.

The basic idea is that most of the information required to support generic process monitoring and calculation of productivity KPIs is now mandated by the latest generation of equipment model standards, and this promises to drastically reduce the factory cost of developing and integrating these applications.
 
On a final note, in discussing the use of the SEMI EDA standards for critical production applications with a number of the leading chip makers during the week, it seems that we are now very close to an industry tipping point for the adoption of this technology. This has been a long time in coming, and opens up a realm of exciting new possibilities for consumers of detailed equipment and process data!

When my daughter turned one year old, she got a very soft blanket as a birthday present. She loved that blanket and would take it everywhere with her. She couldn’t/wouldn’t go to sleep at night without it. When she got old enough to talk, she called it her special blanket or “spesh.” Needless to say, after many years of toting that blanket around, it started to wear out – in fact, it started getting downright nasty. She adamantly refused to part with it even though it was just a rag with little redeeming value.

A couple of years ago, Microsoft made the following announcement: “After 12 years, support for Windows XP ended April 8, 2014. There will be no more security updates or technical support for the Windows XP operating system. It is very important that customers and partners migrate to a modern operating system.”

In the immortal words of Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy from Star Trek, “It’s dead Jim!”

Many arguments have been proffered on both sides as to why users should stay with or move away from XP. Windows XP was first introduced in 2001. That makes the operating system 15 years old — an eternity in computer years. The main argument I see for upgrading from XP is that it is impossible to keep up with advances to the .NET framework and remain on the old operating system. By staying with XP, you are missing out on new features and technologies. These features include taking advantage of better hardware integration for improved system performance and being able to use 64-bit applications and memory space.

Since Microsoft no longer supports XP and no longer provides security updates for the OS, staying with XP is a security risk. Any security holes that have been discovered since Microsoft withdrew support have been ruthlessly targeted.

To come full circle, my daughter finally did give up the little rag that she had left of the blanket. I don’t remember what ultimately made her give it up. She is now 18 and a few months ago, we came across that small piece of her special little blanket that we had stored away. The rag brought back good memories, but we were both glad it had been retired. Isn’t it time to do the same with XP?♦

An issue that inevitably crops up in long-running, complex software systems is memory use. In the worst cases it manifests as a crash after several hours or days of running when the software has consumed all available memory.

Another inevitability is that these out-of-memory crashes are found very late in the development cycle, just prior to a delivery date. Or, worse, they are found after delivery. Given the fact that the crashes take hours or days to occur because the testing cycles are very long, they cause a lot of stress for the development team and frequently delay delivery.

The rest of this blog contains a proposed process to find these issues sooner in the development process and some tools to help the developer investigate memory use.

Early and continuous testing of the software system is the key to avoiding delivery of memory leaks. As soon as possible a dedicated system should be set up for endurance testing. The software should be built in debug mode, but it is not necessary to run it in a debugger. Preferably, for equipment control software, this would use a simulator for the hardware. This should be done as soon as there is enough of the software developed to be able to perform any significant functionality in a repetitive manner. This test can evolve as more of the software is developed with functionality being added to the test as it becomes available. For semiconductor equipment control software, a logical test would be to perform wafer cycling as this would exercise a good majority of the software. 

This endurance test should be kept running during development, right up to delivery. The computer running the endurance test should be configured to collect Windows crash dumps for the software application(s) and have Windows Performance Monitor configured to monitor Private Bytes for the application(s), https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff560134(v=vs.85).aspx. The test should be checked daily to see how the Private Bytes memory use has changed.  If the application has crashed, then the crash dump .DMP file can be collected and analyzed. Visual Studio can be used to open the .DMP file for analysis on the developer’s computer. 

The endurance test should be maintained and updated as the software is updated. However, since run time is important for this test, consider only updating it on a weekly basis unless the update is to fix an issue that caused the test to crash.

If the endurance test shows that the Private Bytes for the application increases steadily with no signs of levelling off, then the application probably has a memory leak.

For C++ programs, Microsoft’s UMDH memory dump utility is very useful for tracking down what allocations are occurring in the application, https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff560206(v=vs.85).aspx. The concept is to take two or more memory snapshots and analyze the differences to see what new objects have been created. Remember to have the software built in debug mode so full debug information is available in the memory dumps.

For .NET programs, newer versions of Visual Studio have built in memory profiling, https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264934.aspx.

There are third party memory analyzers on the market that some have found to be useful. Most of these will report numerous false positives that the developer will have to wade through to get to the real leaks. Most third party memory analyzers for .NET seem to frequently report false positives for COM objects. 

The tools just provide the developer a location to review the code for leaks. It still requires diligence and expertise on the part of the developer to analyze the information and find the cause of the leak. Seldom do the tools create a treasure map with "X" marking the spot of the leak.

Having an endurance test running allows the developer to understand the memory profile of the software and watch how the profile changes as the software changes. Early detection is critical given the length of the testing cycle.♦

Almost everyone I know that has built a house has given me a list of things they would “do differently next time,” but a lot of those same people would also say that they would never build again. So does that mean everything they learned through the process is lost? Is it possible to get it right the first time? Maybe not, but there are a lot of things you can do to learn from the experience of others. For example, you can buy house plans that have been used before and are designed to leverage standard components. Rather than designing and building everything from scratch, you can use pre-built sub systems like fabricated floor joists and manufactured roof trusses. Using proven components saves a lot of time and worry about whether or not they will work properly and as expected. This allows you to focus on the customizations that will make the home meet your unique needs.

Implementing an equipment control application is a lot like building a house. You can design and build a complete control system from the bottom up—building all the components necessary to handle communication with the hardware, display information to the operators, manage user access, log relevant event and data information—but it doesn’t add value to the core competency of your equipment. The best option is to leverage proven design that has been built through multiple prior applications and leverages those lessons learned along the way.

Cimetrix's CIMControlFramework provides all the standard components necessary to build an equipment control application. With working samples for both atmospheric and vacuum equipment, it can easily be customized and extended as needed to meet specific control needs.

There is an old saying that goes, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

If you would like to learn more about CIMControlFramework and how it can help you on your next project, give us a call or feel free to contact us here.♦

On March 30, 2016, Linkgenesis and Cimetrix hosted an Equipment Data Acquisition (EDA) standards seminar in Suwon City, South Korea to introduce equipment suppliers, sub fab component suppliers and system integrators to the concepts, history and best practices involving the SEMI EDA standards, also known as Interface A. The seminar was in response to Samsung’s EDA pilot targeted for Line 17 in Hwaseong with further rollout in Pyeoungtaek. While Interface A is being adopted in the US, Europe, Japan, and Taiwan; this is the first usage in South Korea. Recognizing this, Linkgenesis used their strong contact base in the South Korean semiconductor industry to bring together the major fab suppliers to share knowledge about EDA and demonstrate how Linkgenesis and Cimetrix can help them meet Samsung’s requirements.

The agenda was:

1. Introductions by Sungwoo Jung, CEO Linkgenesis and Eric Ko, Sales General Manager

2. EDA SEMI Standards Overview by Inhyeok Paek, Managing Director Research and Development Center

3. EDA Industry and Market Trends by Dave Faulkner, Cimetrix Executive Vice President

4. Factory Use Cases for EDA by Brian Rubow, Cimetrix Director of Client Training and Support (and co-chair of SEMI North American DDA Task Force)

5. Best Practices in EDA Implementations by Brian Rubow

6. CIMPortal Plus Feature Overview by Brian Rubow

7. Development Steps Using CIMPortal Plus by Mingyu Chung, Linkgenesis Principal Engineer

8. Question and Answer Period

With over 70 attendees, the Q&A session was lively with many good questions and exchange of ideas. Action items and next steps have been established with the attendees as everyone involved is working toward helping the Samsung pilot be successful.♦

If you would like to learn more about the application of the SEMI EDA/Interface A standards, click here for 10 in-depth videos on EDA technology. You can also download a white paper on the SEMI EDA/Interface A standards here.

On March 15-17 in Shanghai, SEMI hosted its annual SEMICON China and PFD China, which was the world’s largest semiconductor trade show of the past five years. With an increase of 20% over last year, the show had more than 2,600 booths from companies based all over the world. Many theme pavilions at the exposition demonstrated the strength of the industry. In addition, the series of concurrent conferences and programs brought the global industry knowledge sharing to exhibitors and attendees alike.

Starting Tuesday morning, the Grand Opening Keynote was delivered by world-class industry leaders including Dr. Zhou Zixue—the Chairman of SMIC, Ding Wenwu—the President of China National IC Fund, along with the CEOs from TSMC, Applied Materials, Amkor Technology, TEL, STATS ChipPAC, and Lam Research. The presentation explored global business and technology trends, market opportunities, and shared the panel’s ideas supporting the development of China’s semiconductor industry.

The rapid rise of China’s semiconductor industry has been driven mainly by an increasing market and investments. Chinese companies and funds have been active in the recent cross-border merger and acquisition deals. On Wednesday at the “Tech Investment Forum – China 2016,” leaders of China’s IC Investment Fund and leading global investment institutions discussed investment hot-topics within the Chinese semiconductor industry.

Also on Wednesday, SEMICON hosted a “Build China IC Manufacturing Ecosystem” forum that discussed establishing a full integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing supply-chain and building manufacturing core competencies that are vital for China’s semiconductor industry. The forum included speakers from China and leading global companies from the IC design, manufacturing, equipment, and materials fields. A wide range of topics was  covered including innovation and cooperation in leading-edge frontend processes, advanced packaging technologies, eight-inch production line, and more.

Other concurrent technology sessions included “China Memory Strategic Forum,” “Technology Shape the Future – Senor Hub Solution for Wearable and IoT,” “LED China Conference 2016,” “Power Semiconductor Forum 2016,” “SEMI-JEDEC Mobile and IoT Technology Forum,” and “China Display Conference/ASID 2016.” These sessions illustrate how the Chinese semiconductor market is interested in exploring industrial developments, share its visions for the future, and to work cohesively to grow the industry within China.

This was the first year Cimetrix exhibited at SEMICON China. We were able to make some valuable connections, visit with existing customers, and establish that Chinese companies have a definite interest in our product lines as well as how we can help them find greater success. We featured our complete SECS/GEM and EDA product lines with in-booth demonstrations and presentations.

We have already made plans to attend next year’s show to further explore how we can fit into the expanding Chinese market. We are hopeful that China will open new possibilities for the continued growth of Cimetrix.♦

In November 2014, Cimetrix attained a status of ISV (IP & Solution Development) Gold Competency Partner with Microsoft^®. Now you may be thinking “So what? What could that possibly have to do with me as a client of Cimetrix?” That’s what I would have thought if I had read the headline without knowing what was involved to both achieving and maintaining that level with Microsoft. So let me briefly share the main value of Cimetrix being a Gold Competency Partner and why it matters to our clients and to Cimetrix.

A requirement for Cimetrix to reach the Gold Level was that we had to have, at a minimum, three (3) products that passed the Gold Competency Test for Windows^® 8. This test (commonly referred to as a “logo” test) ensures that the software applications adhere to patterns and practices consistent with Microsoft’s operating system architecture. The logo compatible applications must conform to the following:

1. Compatibility and Resilience – Apps are expected to be resilient and stable, and eliminating failures helps ensure that software is more predictable, maintainable, performant, and trustworthy.

2. Adherence to Windows Security Best Practices – Using Windows security best practices will help avoid creating exposure to Windows attack surfaces. Attack surfaces are the entry points that a malicious attacker could use to exploit the operating system by taking advantage of vulnerabilities in the target software. One of the worst security vulnerabilities is the elevation of privilege.

3. Support Windows Security Features – The Windows operating system has many features that support system security and privacy. Apps must support these features to maintain the integrity of the operating system. Improperly compiled apps can cause buffer overruns that may, in turn, cause denial of service or allow malicious code execution.

4. Adherence to System Restart Manager Messages – When users initiate shutdown, they usually have a strong desire to see shutdown succeed; they may be in a hurry to leave the office and just want their computers to turn off. Apps must respect this desire by not blocking shutdown. While in most cases a shutdown may not be critical, apps must be prepared for the possibility of a critical shutdown.

5. Support of a Clean, Reversible Installation – A clean, reversible installation allows users to successfully manage (deploy and remove) apps on their systems.

6. Digitally Signing Files and Drivers – An Authenticode digital signature allows users to be sure that the software is genuine. It also allows one to detect whether a file has been tampered with, such as if it has been infected by a virus. Kernel-mode code signing enforcement is a Windows feature known as code integrity (CI), which improves the security of the operating system by verifying the integrity of a file each time the image of the file is loaded into memory. CI detects whether malicious code has modified a system binary file. It also generates a diagnostic and system-audit log event when the signature of a kernel module fails to verify correctly.

7. Prevention of Blocked Installations or App Launches Based on an Operating System Version Check – It is important that customers are not artificially blocked from installing or running their app when there are no technical limitations. In general, if apps were written for Windows Vista or later versions of Windows, they should not have to check the operating system version.

8. Does Not Load Services or Drivers in Safe Mode – Safe mode allows users to diagnose and troubleshoot Windows. Drivers and services must not be set to load in safe mode unless they are needed for basic system operations of such as storage device drivers or for diagnostic and recovery purposes, such as anti-virus scanners. By default, when Windows is in safe mode, it starts only the drivers and services that came preinstalled with Windows.

9. Follows User Account Control Guidelines – Some Windows apps run in the security context of an administrator account, and apps often request excessive user rights and Windows privileges. Controlling access to resources enables users to be in control of their systems and protect them against unwanted changes. An unwanted change can be malicious, such as a toolkit taking control of the computer, or be the result of an action made by people who have limited privileges. The most important rule for controlling access to resources is to provide the least amount “standard user context” necessary for a user to perform his or her necessary tasks. Following user account control (UAC) guidelines provides an app with the necessary permissions when they are needed by the app, without leaving the system constantly exposed to security risks. Most apps do not require administrator privileges at run time, and should be just fine running as a standard-user.

10. Installation to the Correct Folders by Default – Users should have a consistent and secure experience with the default installation location of files, while maintaining the option to install an app in the location of their choice. It is also necessary to store app data in the correct location to allow several people to use the same computer without corrupting or overwriting each other's data and settings. Windows provides specific locations in the file system to store programs and software components, shared app data, and app data specific to a user.

Microsoft provides a suite of tests that ensure compliance to the standards listed above. Cimetrix, as part of our release process, now runs the logo testing suite against all products prior to a scheduled release. To date we have received logo certification for our latest versions of CIM300, EDAConnect, and ECCE Plus. We have also submitted the latest release of CIMConnect for endorsement. We will continue to make sure all new product releases are subject to and pass the logo certification process. Committing to making sure our products are logo tested not only ensures our continued status as a Gold Competency Partner, but it also lets our clients know of our commitment to deliver quality software that is compatible with Microsoft’s current operating systems. 

The largest benefit Cimetrix receives from our Gold Partner status is the access to Microsoft tools and technologies. As a Gold Competency Partner, Cimetrix receives premium MSDN subscriptions to ensure each engineer in Engineering, Quality Engineering, and CT&S have the most up-to-date technology tools, training, and information they need to get their respective jobs done. Having access to the right tools ensures that our engineers can be as efficient and effective as possible. In addition, the cost savings of having these tools provided to us, as opposed to having to purchase a subscription for each engineer, is significant. By saving money on tools, we can devote those monies to product development. 

Application certification and the tools provided by MSDN subscriptions are just a couple of examples of how our Gold Competency Partner status provides benefits to our clients. Cimetrix greatly values its partnership status with Microsoft. We are committed to continuing to adhere to the requirements and standards set by Microsoft in order to retain our Gold status.♦